The longitudinal development of clusters in French.
Studies of English and German find that children tend to acquire word-final consonant clusters before word-initial consonant clusters. This order of acquisition is generally attributed to articulatory, frequency and/or morphological factors. This contrasts with recent experimental findings from French, where two-year-olds were better at producing word-initial than word-final clusters (Demuth & Kehoe, 2006). The purpose of the present study was to examine French-speaking children's longitudinal acquisition of clusters to determine if these results replicate developmentally. Analysis of spontaneous speech productions from two French-speaking children between one and three years confirmed the earlier acquisition of initial clusters, even when sonority factors were controlled. The findings suggest that French-speaking children acquire complexity at the beginnings of words before complexity appears word-finally. The role of frequency, morphological, structural and input factors is discussed.
Demuth
Katherine
K
Department of Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA. Katherine_Demuth@brown.edu
McCullough
Elizabeth
E
D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary